PAX Aus 2018 – WomANZ catch up interview with Naysy

We had a chance to catch up with Naysy, the founder of WomANZ over the weekend. WomANZ is an organisation that focuses on supporting women in the gaming industry in particular content creators and women in esports.

We last talked about WomANZ back in May 2018. At the time, WomANZ had just launched and were starting to grow their Discord community. It’s been almost half a year since then so we wanted to check in and see how everything has been going. We had a chance to catch up with Naysy during the WomANZ Mixer at PAX (Disclaimer: Fran is a member of WomANZ – hence why she was at the mixer):

Fran: So, how is WomANZ going so far?
Naysy: It’s going amazingly. We’ve had so many more people become a part of it than we ever expected. So, it’s been amazing to see and we’ve seen some amazing friendships form and collaborations. I think there’s a group of women doing a D&D campaign at the moment.

We wanna organise meetups – I mean people are kinda doing it themselves. People are eager to hang out which is amazing. Just seeing everyone get together and collaborate and support each other–it’s been awesome.

Fran: Any plans for the future? Anything you’re looking to do that’s cool next year?
Naysy: Yeah. We want to do more things. I’d really love to do more LANs. Something I really want to tackle is esports like encouraging more women to get into competitive gaming. We want to get their feedback, see if there’s something they like to do or want to do.

I feel like a lot of LAN and esports events are so intimidating. So, how can we make that more accessible and less scary? Definitely keen to encourage more women to get into competitive gaming.

But also, more mentorships: education for content creators as well. Twitch is so much like running a business. How do you do taxes? How do you write up an invoice? [Fran:And how to talk to sponsors?] Yeah, exactly.

We’re launching a website very soon, hopefully. We’re trying to get people on board to write some articles and do info sessions with Discord to get people on board. So, there’s lots we want to do.

Fran: Everyone is still doing their own stuff but getting to do everything on the side: it’s the passion project
Naysy: Exactly. It’s very much a passion project right now. I always think about my journey. I’ve been in gaming and tech for 10 years. So, I think about the things I’ve struggled with and where I would have loved to have had help and support. I think of things I could do to help other people in their career and progression.